Dreaming in Digital

The Pre-Hangover Run

The car pulled up to Kaitō’s block right as the clock hit 2200; Collateral was right on time. The runner opened the passenger door and hopped in, checking his gun’s snugness in its hidden holster. The wheelman glanced over at him, shifting gears to throw the infiltrator back into his seat. “V-Tec just kicked in,” he said with a smirk.

Kaitō worked to mask his discomfort. This was his first run with a member of the Shattered Link, and he hoped to make a good impression. When Collateral called this morning asking him to ride shotgun, he was duty-bound to offer his help; regardless of that, though, he would have done so in a heartbeat. Though he was best-equipped for covert B&E-type jobs, every now and then the infiltrator liked to get his hands dirty. Their ‘run to the barrens tonight promised just enough to keep him interested, in that regard.

As they swung hard around a turn onto the 405, Collateral gave Kaitō a grin. A small group of bikers were coming up fast behind them, the engines on their souped-up crotch-rockets buzzing like a swarm of angry hornets. “Ready to hit Redmond?”

Kaitō nodded and held on as Collateral made the Eurocar dance. He downshifted and slammed on the brakes, spinning the car around while catching two unfortunates with the front and rear fenders. Completing the spin, Collateral quickly ramped through three gears as the turbocharged Eurocar took them well ahead of the remaining bikers, who had conveniently dismounted to see to their de-biked brethren.

He grinned at Kaitō. “Are you having fun? I know I am.”

The infiltrator reluctantly let go of the handle above the door; it was grooved where his hand had dug into it. “You could call it that.”

They exited the 405 without further incident, rolling into the Redmond Barrens. The car most definitely stood out; less because it was a Westwind and more because it had all four wheels. Collateral went over the plan one last time on their way to the target.

“You got it straight?”

“Walk into an orc-ganger bar, find the biggest one in there, yank his chain, and make sure they see this,” Kaitō said, gesturing to the green stylized A pinned on his leather jacket. “Also, don’t get geeked.”

“I knew we picked you up for something.”

They rolled up to the bar and Kaitō stepped out, his hood pulled down low over his shock of black hair. “Keep it running, I’ll only be a minute.”

As Kaitō walked in, he was relieved to see their contact’s info was legit. There were only a handful of orcs drinking in here, with a troll bartender; the rest of the gang was off fighting a turf war with a splinter-group of Ancients. “Which of you trogs is Bart?”

Immediately, five occupants of the bar swung their heads toward the elf “Who the fuck you callin’ a trog, keeb?” said a sixth, standing up from a game of cards.

He was obviously a Changeling; there weren’t too many blue orks. Also apparent was the gold Aztec talisman Collateral had been hired to bring back to his Mr. Johnson. Kaitō left the question unanswered, instead rushing the big ork by vaulting the card table and placing a solid roundhouse to the side of his head. Sand scoured Bart’s face, leaving unhealthy-looking purple abrasions. Before he could even retaliate, the elf followed it up with a second kick, this time square to the jaw. The ork fell limp to the ground, his gun half-drawn. The five remaining orks hadn’t even cleared their seats before Kaitō hopped off the table and rode their fallen leader to the ground, snatching the necklace from him. He straightened his jacket, flashed them his Ancient’s logo, and was out the door with a hail of gunfire following him. A round skipped off Kaitō’s armored bicep, plinking Collateral’s car.

As Kaitō hopped into the car, the wheelman gunned it, leaving a couple hundred meters of burnt rubber outside the bar. “Dammit man, be more careful! Those assholes almost punched a hole in my baby!”

“I’m sure you can afford to patch it with the cash from this,” he replied, dangling the Aztec talisman from his hand.

“Not bad for a few hours’ work,” Collateral replied, a grin slowly spreading across his face. “You know, I thought you had it sideways, based on the way they were spraying out the door.”

Kaitō spotted the garage as he rounded the corner, just as his mapsoft said he would. He patted his hidden gun in its holster subconsciously and started off toward the single open bay in the mechanic’s shop.

“I see it,” he said over his subvocal mic. He received affirmatives from the two other members of his team, the rigger Ghost and their hacker 8-bit. This was it; their merry chase around Tacoma had come to a close as they narrowed down their quarry to this garage. Scoping out the front of the building for a few minutes, Kaitō saw no one enter or exit; the open bay in the middle of the 3-door garage was the only visible means of entrance. “I’m going in.”

“Need cover?” Ghost asked, hovering above the street in her Dragonfly, based on the visual feed Kaitō was streaming from her.

“No, I should be fine. I’m just going in to talk nicely. And if they don’t answer, maybe not-nicely.”

As he crossed the threshold of the door, he had the distinct feeling something bad was about to happen. Turning to look behind him, he was thrown across the garage by an exploding air-compressor near the door, landing hard on his shoulder and rolling before he came to a stop flat on his ass. The sound of a shotgun feeding a round into the chamber was the first sound he could identify after shaking off the shock of being thrown five meters from the door.

“Don’t move, keeb,” said the vat-job Kaitō could only assume was Ed, the man the shop was registered to, and who he’d come to find. “Take your gun out, slowly, and toss it over here.” He complied, pulling Claire out from his shoulder holster and gingerly tossing it to the vat-job, cringing at the sound of the gun clanking off the metal grating surrounding a lift. “Any more of them?”

Kaitō shook his head, praying to Kannon that Ed didn’t notice the hold-out gun up his sleeve.

He then prayed to Ghost, who had a better record of helping out. “15 seconds,” she replied.

Ed backed away, kicking Kaitō’s gun further into the garage. This also put him well within sight of the open door.

A sudden blur shot through the door, catching both their attentions, followed by a burst of gunfire as one of Ghost’s drones riddled the vat-job with stick-n-shock rounds. Ignoring the newest thread, Ed spun and cracked a shot off at his prisoner, catching him full in the chest with the blast. It was only his infiltration suit that saved Kaitō, absorbing much of the blast around his upper chest, but not all of it. He was clearly bleeding between the plates of his armor.

Fuck, that hurt. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken a shot, but he normally had more of a chance to roll with it. Centering himself, he watched as Ed lined up another shot at him, this time flipping himself backward and onto his feet, avoiding the blast by half a hand’s width. He winced at the pain, only to watch Ed take another burst to the chest, collapsing in a heap as a second assailant peppered the drone with assault-rifle fire from across the garage. Kaitō could her GlaDOS shouting encouragement to HAL as he shifted his fire from Ed to the newest attacker who was now hunkering down behind cover.

Kaitō twitched his arm, the hold-out pistol from his forearm holster sliding into his right hand. He winced as the motion shifting his bruised and battered side. Attempting to activate his cloak, he was disappointed to find his outline only partially-gone, instead also limned in a green glow as he stood over Ed’s prostrate body.

“Don’t!” the attacker with the assault rifle yelled from his covered position. “Don’t kill Ed! This shit ain’t worth any of us getting geeked over.”

Holding his aim at Ed’s head, Kaitō called back, “Where’s the cabinet?”

“We’ve got it hidden. I’ll take you to it. Just don’t kill Ed.”

Just then, a third voice broadcast over a local signal. “Shit man, what the fuck is that? I’m done here, I’m fucking done.”

with the first run not quite in the books

There’s a hurricane barreling in towards the city, so there’s no real time for an extensive post-game wrap. However, I did want to record some of the fantastically memorable moments from the game.

The team’s rigger, Madalynn “Ghost” Hughes, suffered too much feedback from a firefight and went unconscious. The team had to abandon their getaway and take to the alleys. The wealthy Sirene called for a car to meet them. Unbeknownst to the team, Ghost has a DocWagon contract. When the car met the team for the pickup, an armored DocWagon truck slammed into the back of the sedan, sending it several car lengths down the block. The armed extraction team snatched Ghost before anyone could protest and left before anyone knew what the hell was going on. The poor, unsuspecting driver of the sedan exited the car, stunned and befuddled. Kaitō approached him, shook his hand and declared, “Congratulations. You’ve just been DocWagoned.”

When questioning a down-on-his-luck dive bar owner about the contents of a disk containing the team’s coveted paydata, Sirene asked her spirit compantion Agrippa to assense the man’s aura and see if he was being truthful. “Doesn’t look like he’s hiding anything to me. Also, he has herpes.”

As the team scurried through dank alleys in between buildings as they fled the scene of a shootout, a Knight Errant rotodrone tailed the group and kept a spotlight and a camera on them. Eight Bit got bold and declared he would hack the drone. After rolling all successes on an Edged hacking roll, the drone confused his exploit account for a genuine KE officer’s account. Over the loudspeaker, its repetitious warning changed to a friendly tone. “Good morning, officer P?@W3d0a(&*&^. What would you like me to do?”

Eight Bit, a little shocked, replied, “Return to base.”

“Roger that, sir. Thank you for your service today.”

As the rotodrone spun off into the distance, the team stared at it, stunned. Kaitō turned to his hacker’s AR icon. “…Did that just happen?”

after a month of prep, the game is nearly ready

Despite hectic work schedules, conventions and home repair disasters, Dreaming in Digital is on schedule to being its first session tomorrow. I can’t speak for any of the PCs but I’m ready to blow this thing away. We’ve polished characters, injected more content and brought in more tools to help this game get started on the right foot.

Even though I’ve created concepts for no less than eight run ideas, I’ve decided to start with a pre-made Shadowrun adventure. Only Ghost and Sirene’s players are experienced SR4a players and I’ve never run SR4a myself, so starting with something tried and proven seems like a sound idea. It’s On the Run, as described there in the link. Its big hook involves Goblin Rock, which Sirene in particular will have a unique interest in. With the serendipitous coincidence between the hook and one of my PCs, I just couldn’t pass it up.

In the downtime before the game I’ve also gotten to know Roll20 fairly well. It’s got enough mapmaking tools to allow me to use the maps in the adventure without having to go to a printing press or do cartwheels in Adobe CS to make it usable online. It’s got a built-in video conferencing feature, which lets Eight Bit connect from afar without having to loop in a second software product.

A trip to GenCon last week allowed me to land some sweet Shadowrun swag to use for the game. A series of adventures they use at the convention (collectively known as Elven Blood), full-color flash cards with vehicles, drones and weapons, some awesome Shadowrun dice (d6 with the S logo on the six face) and my personal favorite, a DocWagon t-shirt.

My major snag so far has been a home repair disaster. My house’s main AC unit decided to dump a few dozen gallons of water into the wall and onto the floor, so my game room is trashed for the moment. A last minute change of venue to Kaitō‘s player’s apartment solves that though.

I’ve still got a few notes to take today before the big splash tomorrow, but, with a portable AC going behind me I can get it done. Assuming I don’t get sucked into MineCraft or Mass Effect 3 in the interim.

Arc ideas begin to form around the PCs

Diligent work on characters continues by all players. Stats and 20 questions are pretty much done all around the board. At this stage, players are fleshing out contacts—bios, descriptions, relationships, and the ever-entertaining hunt for decent pictures. Players who have done as much as they can add more flavor to the game by further fleshing out their contacts, their enemies and backup characters with full stats. We haven’t started playing yet, and there’s a lot of content for this game already. One of my primary goals for any GM/storytelling role is immersion. A large part of that is breathing life into all the characters the PCs interact with. So far, the players have created this immersion for themselves. Collective storytelling is really something to behold.

Our cast hasn’t changed, but we’ve picked up a new player to help round out the group in case anyone is missing on any particular day. I like to keep my PC groups at 4 players normally, but life happens and as often happens, someone can’t show up. So, in the interest of maintaining game continuity, I’ve invited one more. She’s in the middle of moving so she won’t have a character concepted for a little while, but I don’t think that will take much longer. And hopefully it won’t hinder the plans for the game, which are beginning to percolate in the back of my mind.

The themes of transhumanism and distorted reality will still play a prominent role in the ongoing story being told. All stories need an antagonist, though, and that’s something I was hoping the players would help me define. With the first four characters basically done, I how have that idea starting for form. In any given Shadowrun game, the PCs are “deniable assets”, fire-and-forget covert ops for corporations and other powerful agencies to use against one another. In our group, two characters have a strong motivation to oppose corporate power written into their backgrounds, while a third is naturally a good-hearted person who would look after the small people of the world anyway. With those motivations in play, I may turn this group into a more altruistic team, one who takes jobs as much for the money as for the idea of helping push back against corporate power.

From here, I get to start figuring out larger arcs, and then I can begin planning out individual runs. Hopefully, maybe on the other side of GenCon, we’ll get this thing rolling.

Player interest spawns interesting concepts

Two weeks since the inception of the game and corresponding invitations were sent out, the four assembled players have delved deeply into chargen. Content is not lacking. The ideas are myriad and unique. Some are brand new; others are callbacks to previous campaigns and characters some of us can’t quite let go of. Sometimes a concept grabs you and sticks with you, and there’s no shaking it.

Nathan was first. His is a new take with a new background on a previous concept—a Dronomancer. In the world of Technomancy, there are what are called “Resonance Streams”. They are roughly equivalent to Hermetic Traditions for mages. Each Stream has its own focus, its specific Sprites it can compile, and its own drain attribute. Dronomancers are Technomancers that have a specific connection to drones and the Sprites that they compile to inhabit them. Nathan’s focus on Sprite compiling and registering means he lacks hacking skills, which is okay. It’s a different twist on the core concept of what a Technomancer is, and that’s why I like it.

Chris settled on his character next. Though he hasn’t submitted 20 Questions or a sheet yet, in a way he doesn’t have to. I know his character well, because I built it myself. Sirene was originally just an experiment in building a social Adept and applying SR4’s exhaustive list of social-related adept powers to the classic Shadowrun Rocker archetype. Rockers were the original Faces. Sirene’s blend of old-school charm and SR4’s deep exploration of the Adept concept makes her stand out. I gave her to Chris in our previous campaign where we were both players. He didn’t get much of a chance to flesh her out as the game ended soon after, so I’m really glad to see him breathe new life into her.

Eric is new to Shadowrun but in the last week he’s been stricken with the same fever Nathan and I have had for years. The system’s immersive flavor and deep granularity is addicting for micromanagers like us. He’s gone through at least half a dozen character concepts, though the one he’s settled on is a solid pick. The infiltration specialist is a valuable addition to any team, but I’m especially fond of any build done with an Adept. He’s chosen the Invisible Way for a ninja-esque blend stealth and unarmed combat. He’s also got a corp background, which makes for great GM tools when it comes to constructing adversaries for the Shadowrunners.

Andrew’s the straggler in the group, but understandably so. I invited him while he was moving out of state. When I mentioned running Shadowrun he expressed both great affection for the setting and great disappointment that he wouldn’t be around to play. So, I’m going to try to solve that problem. SR4 includes two solid options for tele-play: the AI and the Full Immersion lifestyle. He’s gone with the second. His 20 questions are finished, and his concept is out of the box for a full immersion character. The easiest way to involve a tele-character is to make him a hacker. I encouraged him to think out of the box, though, and he did. His concept is a well-networked man, sort of a Fixer but on the Runner side of things. So he’ll be a social character, but not necessarily the charismatic face, like Sirene. It’ll be a challenge to incorporate him into the game nonetheless, but it’s a challenge I’m looking forward to.

an idea begins to form

The one truth I cannot refute is that I love to tell a story.

Many years ago, I had hung up my GM hat. After being ever the gamemaster and never the player for near the entirety of my teens and twenties, I’d decided that I wanted to play. GMing properly was hard work- map preparations, authoring background fiction, developing deep NPCs with motives, creating baddies with proper challenges and more were time-consuming to say the least. At some point I simply decided that the effort put into the game did not equal the payout I received. So, for the last 8 years or so, I was either a player or, more commonly, I simply didn’t have a game at all.

The eruption of gaming in the local community in the last year (thanks to new life being breathed into the local community by two good gaming stores) brought lots of new opportunities for me to participate in regular roleplaying. One of my groups hit a stumble soon after initiating its regular game, and the group’s GM handed me the Fireborn book with a not-so-subtle suggestion that I try my hand at GMing while the group went through its tribulations.

Since then, I’ve rediscovered my affection for telling a story. Now, much older and more mature, I’m hoping to take up the reins again as a full-time GM with one of my favorite settings, Shadowrun. Assembling the group and getting some character concepts set is step 1. Step 2 will be crafting a campaign setting around them, based on their input. Instead of winging it, as I used to do in my GMing days of old, this time I plan to have a long-term goal of creating a setting and fleshing its details out fully before starting a game. The more preparation I can do in one block months ahead of time, the less time I’ll have to spend week to week getting each game done on the fly.

What I hope to create, with not only my developed sensibilities but with all the digital tools available to me in today’s information age, is an immersive and emotionally significant experience for a core group of passionate players.